This Is Home
by xoWriteToBeMexo
Summary: Without having much say in the matter, eighteen-year-old Lena Donovan has become the head of the household. With both of her parents now gone, this left Lena and her three younger siblings to band together and fend for themselves. But it has gotten harder to maintain any sort of stability. Worst of all, little Sophie Donovan is obsessed with finding a door to the land of Narnia.


**Chapter 1 – Dear Mr. Lewis**

I was right in the middle of making a tomato sandwich, with orange guts all over my fingers when my youngest sister, Sophie, marched into the kitchen, climbed up next to me on a tall wooden stool, and handed me the letter. I didn't even read it right away – just clasped it between the heels of my two hands and tossed it over to the only corner of the kitchen counter that wasn't covered with lunch bags and bread crumbs.

How was _I_ supposed to know it was the beginning of everything, that stupid letter? It didn't look like anything dramatic at all. In fact, it was written on Kermit the Frog stationary. Besides, I had about eight thousand other things on my mind that morning.

"Lena, can you proofread that before we leave for school?" Sophie inquired, watching her envelope slide to the edge of the marble countertop. "I need to have it spelled right for language arts." Sophie was in the second grade. She was possibly the quietest kid in our family, and very nice for her age, but oblivious when it came to things like interrupting people who are busy.

I had overslept by more than an hour. I was trying to memorize chemistry formulas for a test I had third period while I cut five tomato sandwiches into triangles, wrap them in plastic, and stuff them into brown paper bags – two for me, two for my brother, Garrett, one for my sister, Paige, and one for Sophie. We had to leave for school in twenty minutes, my hair wasn't brushed, the kitchen was in a state of chaos, and I kept on tripping on Garrett, who was lying on the linoleum floor in pajamas with his head under the sink, trying to fix a leaky pipe. I was not in the mood for Sophie.

"Hold on, Soph," I insisted, stumbling over Garrett's lanky legs. "Just wait a minute." I was rolling up the white sleeves of my white Oxford shirt that was a part of my mandatory school uniform – too late because the cuffs had already drug through the tomato juice and turned orange. "Garrett, will you _move_?" I demanded, nudging him lightly with my sock clad foot, but he didn't budge. I kicked him harder in the shin, and he inched himself over to the right a little.

Sophie stayed where she was on the stool, swinging her legs. "I _need _to have it spelled right for school," she emphasized. "It's a letter to Mr. Lewis. It's s'posed to be to your favorite author." She wasn't whining; she _never _whines. But I knew she was going to sit right there and repeat herself in a reasonable voice until she got what she needed. _That's the way Sophie operates. _

"I asked him about the door to Narnia… 'Cause we don't have a wardrobe, or a portrait with a ship – _nothing _like that. So I asked him if there was _any _other way to get there. But I need you to–"

"Just hold _on_, will ya?" I snapped, my hazel eyes narrowing into angry slits. "What are you, deaf or something? I'll read it when I'm finished."

Sophie's shoulders jumped a little. She stopped swinging her legs, wrapped her arms around her rib cage, and sighed. Her eyes stayed fastened on the envelope.

"Lena," said Garrett from under the sink, "turn on the water for a second. I wanna see if it's still leaking."

I exhaled, laid the knife down on the counter, and wrenched the faucet on. Water spewed out all around the edges, and I ground it back off. "Yeah," I told him through gritted teeth, "it's _still _leaking. Just forget it, Garrett – you can mess with it after school." I picked the knife back up and began savagely cutting the rest of the sandwiched in half, keeping one eye on the digital clock over the stove. Eighteen minutes till we had to leave for school. We couldn't afford being tardy yet _again_.

"I've almost got it," Garrett insisted huffily.

Garrett was only thirteen then – he's five years younger than me…but he was a genius about fixing things. He fixed our VCR when it started eating the tapes, and the smoke detector, and Sophie's hand held radio. So when the faucet started leaking and he claimed he could fix it, I believed him. _My mistake._

Though the kid was a genius with appliances, he was clueless about everyday things like not being late for school.

I reached for the last of the sandwiches, grabbed the edged of the _Wonder _bread with one hand and the knife handle with the other, and stabbed across the middle of the bread and into the skin between my index finger and thumb. Dropping the knife, I stuck my hand automatically into my mouth, sucked the bloody slice, and was surprised by how little it stung. Then tomato juice seeped into the cut, and it felt like someone had rammed a stake through my hand.

_"Shit_!"

"What's the matter?" Garrett asked offhandedly.

I shook my hand as hard as I could to numb the paid, then paused to look at the damage – a long res tripe, like a paper cut. I stuck it under the cold water faucet but this time nothing came out. Since I couldn't think of anything else to do, I swore even louder, again, and threw the knife down into sink as hard as I could.

"You cut your hand," Sophie observed from the stool. "You're bleeding."

"I _know_," I bit out, sticking my hand back into my mouth and sucking on the injury, glaring down at Garrett, who _still_ wasn't moving.

Sophie slid off the stool and came over to me. Her big blue eyes were full of concern, and her blonde hair was lifted by static electricity so her bangs floated over her forehead like a golden halo. She tugged my hand down to where she could examine it, I noticed she was dressed in the same jeans and sky-blue sweatshirt she'd been wearing for the last three days. It occurred to me that her teacher might notice something like that – might call the house to see what was wrong.

Retrieving my hand, I leaned over and spat into the sink. "Go change your clothes," I instructed, irritated. "You can't wear those – they're dirty."

Sophie's eyes filled with tears. "_All _my clothes are dirty," she murmured pitifully.

"Well, find some _different _dirty ones. You just can't wear those. And hurry up – we gotta leave the house in seventeen minutes if we want to be _on time_." I grabbed the end of the paper towel roll over the sink, tugged off a chain of three and wrapped them around my hand like a bandage. "Garrett," I said, to which he didn't respond. "Hey, _Garrett_!" I kicked him again as Sophie fled from the kitchen, her socks skating over the linoleum floor.

"What?"

"Get out of there and go get dressed. It's seven-twenty-three."

There was a deep gurgling sound from under the sink, and then a metallic squeak. For a second I thought he'd fixed it. But then I heard a slurping sound, like bubbles draining from a bathtub. Garrett lunged up to a squatting position and I barely jumped out of his way before a rush of foamy drain water came spewing out everywhere – all over the pots and pans in the cabinet and out onto the floor in big, slimy rivers.

"_Garrett_!" I shrieked, climbing up onto the kitchen stool. "Turn that off!"

His face was wet, and his mop of dirty-blonde hair, which he'd tied back with a bandanna, was beginning to drip. He leaned forward into the cabinet and fumbled with something under the sink. "Okay," he said, clearing his throat. "Okay. Hold on a minute."

He tinkered with the pipes for just a few more seconds and the water was shut off. _Thank God. _

"I'll clean this mess up while _you_ go change. You're still not even dressed yet," I sighed, waving him off and stepping down from the stool.

"Lena, just let me–"

Our sister Paige slammed into the kitchen just then, a towel turban wrapped around her head and another towel fastened under her armpits. "What's going on?" she demanded through clenched teeth. "The shower isn't working right. What the hell did you guys _do_?"

"The pipe broke. I was just trying to fix it," Garrett informed her dryly, removing the red bandanna from his head and wiping his damp hands with it.

"Well, then _do it_," Paige commanded, veering her eyes into a roll. "I have to get ready for school. I _still _have to conditioner my hair!"

I glanced at Garrett, who didn't say anything as he averted his eyes down to the space of floor between his feet. _Poor kid. _I knew he sometimes felt outnumbered, what with having _three _sisters and no one to back him up. I knew if Dad still had been around (it didn't hurt as bad thinking of him in the past tense like it used to) he would have had Garrett's back on this.

So, I couldn't help but feel obligated to stand in for him. To, once again, be the parent that we all _desperately _needed back in our lives. "Paige, quit being such a diva. We'll just work with what we have…"

And the four of us did just that.

In the next fifteen minutes, with every one of us putting in a shared amount of effort, the rest of our usual morning routine went off without a hitch. Paige, Garrett and Sophie had even offered to help me clean up the kitchen before locking up the house and heading out to The Creature (I had Paige to thank for the creative nickname). The thing may have been ugly, but it served its purpose just fine. It was red, but it had rust spots on the hood and roof from the many winters it had been through. The windows had tint, but it was cheap and slowly peeling off, adding to the raggedy look of the vehicle. However, no matter what the outside looked like, it was strangely dependable. It didn't make _any _noise, it shifted gears without protest, and the window and radio worked.

"Alright, everyone, buckle up," I commanded from the driver's seat, securing myself in and watching from my peripheral vision as Garrett dutifully did as instructed. In the rear view mirror I saw Paige heave a sigh but did as I said. Sophie, on the other hand, was struggling with hers.

"Paige, help Sophie out," I remarked while placing the key into the ignition and the car's engine roared to life. I wasn't satisfied until I knew that all of us were all secured, and then reversed out of the driveway and headed up our street.

If I was calculating the time right, we'd all end up making it to our homerooms right on schedule. _Maybe today might not be so bad…_

"Hey, Gare, turn on the radio," Paige called from the backseat.

"Nothing too edgy," I mumbled to him under my breath, so Paige couldn't hear. I was already a weary driver, fast-paced music would just plunge me over the edge.

I noticed that Garrett turned it to a local country station, which seemed to appease everyone. _That's a first._

_"…We can be the kings and queens of anything if we believe.  
It's written in the stairs that shine above,  
a world where you and I belong  
Where faith an love will keep us strong  
Exactly who we are is just enough  
There's a place for us."_

I began to hum along to the song, realizing just how beautiful the lyrics to it were.

"That sounds like Narnia!" Sophie exclaimed happily from her seat.

"Lena, I _thought_ you were going to stop reading her those stupid books," Paige sneered, rolling her heavily lines eyes. Even though she was only fourteen, her makeup and clothes made her look practically _my _age.

"They are _not _stupid," Sophie retorted, narrowing her eyes angrily. "Lena told me that _you _liked them when you were a kid!"

"Yeah, when I was, like, _five_," Paige snickered. "Just grow up already, would ya, runt? Time to face the real world. There's no magical wardrobe or lamppost–"

"Paige," I finally cut in, before she would say something she would regret.

"–no Mr. Tumnus or Talking Animals–"

"Paige."

"–no Pevensies or ancient prophecies–"

"Paige!"

"–no White Witch or mythical lion–"

"_Paige!"_

"God, _okay_. I heard you the first _hundred _times, Warden," she sighed, clucking her tongue and shifting her gaze back out the window.

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, noticing how my knuckles were turning bone white. I hated this, all of it. After losing Dad just a little over a year ago, I wondered how it was even possible for us to function properly again. How we could all just pick up the broken pieces that were now our lives and move on from the crazed society of pain and desolation that we had to live in.

But we somehow managed. It was (and still is) a process, day in and day out, but all of us could finally breathe now without it hurting so much.

For Garrett, he liked to mess around with things about the house because that was how he and Dad had spent most of their male 'bonding time' together. It was his little way of keeping Dad fresh in his mind, so that he wouldn't forget. For Paige (even though she didn't know I knew), she kept a hidden stash of Dad's ties in her sock drawer that still smelt like him – Old Spice, coffee and spearmint. For both me and Sophie, we would read _The Chronicles of Narnia _by author C.S. Lewis. I knew how much our father had cherished that book series, and he had just started reading them to Sophie when he had passed away.

"Lena?" a soft whisper broke my train of thought, checking me back into reality.

"What is it, Soph?" I asked, my gaze flickering up to the rear view mirror as I stared back at her.

"My letter…," she murmured, pulling out the lime green envelope from the inner lining of her jacket and holding it up for me to see. "You forgot to look at it, 'member?"

I mentally slapped myself. _Of course. _"Do you want to read it out loud for me?" I suggested, clearing my throat.

She hesitantly nodded her head and removed the piece of paper, unfolded it and began to read aloud in a shaky voice:

_Dear Mr. Lewis,_

_Hi! My name is Sophie and I'm seven years old. I go to Oakdale Elementary in Hartford, New Hampshire. I'm writing you this letter because I was wondering if you could tell me about Narnia, and maybe even how to get there! _

_My big sissy, Lena, reads me your books at bedtime and tells me all about Aslan, Narnia and the Pevensies all the time. But see, we don't have a wardrobe or a magical picture frame. I tried looking in my closet, but I didn't see any lamppost. _

_So, I was wondering if you could tell me another way to get to Narnia. Lena told me that my daddy went to Aslan's Country – the one across the sea. And me, Paige, Garrett, and Lena miss him lots and lots. We just want to see him. And I know Aslan could tell me where to find him!_

_ Please write back soon? _

_Lots of love,  
Sophie Donovan _

The silence in the car was tangible, so much so that I could practically taste the bitterness of it on my taste buds. I felt my heart constrict tightly in my chest, and my throat become dry and itchy. My tongue felt like sandpaper.

"Sophie–"

"Lena, _lookout_!"

Just as Garrett had yelled out the warning, a tractor trailer in the lane next to me swerved to miss something on the road. Unfortunately, I was in the path of the swerve. With a deafening crunch, my four door car became a two door and everything went black. My last conscious thought was, _God, please get us out of here!_

* * *

**A/N: **_I'm so excited for this story! I absolutely adore this series and C.S. Lewis was just an amazing man and writer! :) _

_Okay, so just a few side notes:_

_-takes place in the Golden Age_

_-somewhat AU_

_-though this story focuses more on the Donovan and Pevensie families as a whole, there will be romance involved! :)_

_-there will be spiritual aspects included_

_I can't really think of anything else... If you have any questions, please ask! Thanks so much for reading! Please leave a review with your thoughts, comments or suggestions! _

_-xoxo, D. _


End file.
